My Huge Faerie Backpiece

By Anonymous · Oct. 11, 1999

so I have known Alex for awhile now. He is my best friend's older brother and he's been tattooing for about 3 years or so. Well, I spent a lot of time in art class in high school drawing big-busted faeries but nothing came out quite the way I liked it. I knew WHAT I wanted, I just couldn't draw it to the standards of putting it on my body. So, I approached Alex with my dillema and he let me look at the artist Brian Rouche's book "Faeries" and show him what I did and didn't like. Then he drew me a picture. It wasn't exactly what I was going for, considering that it was a young faerie girl and I was thinking more of a woman faerie. But we talked about it and he explained the whole "preservation of innocence" thing about not having tits on my body (excluding my own), so I went with it. The faerie is sitting on a toadstool mushroom and she has huge monarch-butterfly-like wings and leaves swirling around her. The tattoo was planned for the middle of my upper back.
Finally, I went in to get the outline done. Alex warned me ahead of time that it would take about two hours. I went on a Wednesday, and even though no other artists were working that day, it was slow. Thank God because I had to wear a shirt made out of paper that I swear came from a gynecologist's office! But, it was the only way he could get to my back! The picture was applied to my back and it was amazing! The tip of one of the wings comes up almost reaching my collar bone! I was so in awe and ready to go for it! So, we began. I sat straddling a chair with a half-blown-up beach ball to lay on. Alex warned me before the first line and it wasn't as bad as I expected. I did experience some pain, and my legs were shaking almost the whole two hours, but it was nothing that I couldn't endure. It was an erotic pain, in a way. As soon as we were getting into the groove, I guess you could say, Alex's sister (my best friend) and her boyfriend showed up! Just what I needed! They made me nervous all over again. When they finally left, Alex informed me that he had been stoked that I showed up by myself to get it done and them showing up p*ssed him off! Anyways, we continued. It was freezing and I had chosen to wear flip-flops because I was thinking that comfi-ness was a virtue. Well, Alex ended up giving me his socks to wear while he was working on me! HA HA! Finally, the outline was done, and I only had to deal with a few people browsing in the studio, staring at my back in the mirror, and going "Wow! That's really big!"
The day after I got it done my best friend came to my house to see it. She spent the whole time telling me how huge it was and that I wouldn't be able to cover it up easily. This is all coming from a girl who has a tattoo on her lower back that you can see any time she wears jeans! I have learned that you will encounter a lot of close minded people in situations like this. But I have also been fortunate to have tons of people at school come up to me and want to see it because they notice it when I wear a tank-top. Tattoos are really good conversation starters-it's how I met my new crush... :)
I have been back one time since then to get it worked on, and I sat for another two hours for the bold outline and shading to be done. I think that part hurt worse than the outline! Especially on my spine! I still shook, but a lot less this time! And I wore my own socks, plus a back-wards flannel (no more paper gowns for me)! Here I am, this girl getting a gigantic faerie on my back, and some guy I know comes in and gets a little black widow spider on his back, done by another artist (P-Nut) and his only took about 10 minutes! My tattoo experience (which isn't over yet-I still plan on getting the whole thing colored in with fire-colors) has definetly allowed me to gain some self-respect for myself! If I can sit there for two-hours at a time and get poked in my spine and laugh at a guy who picks something that takes 10 minutes, anybody can do it! You will actually find that you enjoy the pain-I promise. I told Alex I thought it was erotic and all he said was "they're addicting...tattoos."

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